Steyer backs Clinton despite Keystone caution

Tom Steyer jumped into national politics two years ago by drawing a line in the sand on the Keystone XL pipeline, even suggesting he’d spend part of his vast fortune attacking Democrats who support the project. As recently as last fall, he opined that a primary challenge might be a “good thing” for Hillary Clinton, who has remained conspicuously silent on where she stands on the project.

But on Wednesday, the environmentalist billionaire hosted a $2,700-per-person fundraiser for Clinton at his San Francisco home overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge — while some anti-Keystone activists were left to wave signs on the streets outside.

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It’s yet another sign that Steyer has never been the free-wheeling cage-rattler that he and his aides have sometimes portrayed him to be — and that Clinton’s reluctance to weigh in on the Keystone controversy isn’t quite the existential threat to her presidential ambitions that some punditry has assumed. Indeed, from the very beginning, the former hedge fund trader has proved to be a loyal Democrat with a long history of supporting Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Steyer’s devotion to the presumed Democratic front-runner rubs some greens the wrong way, prompting complaints that he’s demanding too little in return. As secretary of state, Clinton presided over studies that said the pipeline would pose few environmental risks, and she infamously said in 2010 that the administration was “inclined” to support the project. Now she’s avoiding public comment on the issue while Secretary of State John Kerry and President Barack Obama weigh the pipeline’s fate.

“I am not surprised that he would want to get on-board the Clinton train, but I’m disappointed he did so apparently without obtaining any commitments from her on issues like Keystone,” said Guy Saperstein, a San Francisco lawyer, Clinton critic and past president of the Sierra Club Foundation. “If I’m wrong about that, Tom can correct me.”

Steyer’s aides say Clinton has won him over by offering forceful rhetoric on climate change — the issue that has always been the billionaire’s top priority. They say his opposition to Keystone, a project that would funnel Canadian crude oil to the Gulf Coast, stems from his fear that it would worsen carbon pollution.

One source familiar with Steyer’s thinking pointed to remarks Clinton made last year at a clean-energy summit in Las Vegas hosted by Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid in which she called climate change “the most consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of challenges we face as a nation and a world.” Those words “made clear the primary importance of addressing this critical issue,” the source said.

But Clinton conspicuously left some topics out of that speech, including her views on Keystone. The Center for Biological Diversity, the environmental group organizing Wednesday’s rally outside Steyer’s mansion, says she also never responded to its plea from a year ago for her to speak out against the pipeline.

“If we’re going to have a planet that’s livable for people and wildlife, we need Hillary Clinton standing with millions of Americans calling for an end to fossil fuel addiction,” the group’s Valerie Love said in a news release this week. “Tackling the climate crisis ought to start with rejecting projects like Keystone XL followed by a visionary plan to dramatically reduce carbon pollution and steer us toward cleaner, safer energy sources.”

“Keystone is one of the issues that would help people understand where she’s coming from on climate more precisely,” said Peter Galvin, the center’s director of programs.

The group’s rally included an activist dressed in a polar bear costume that has also dogged some of Obama’s travels.

But even greens’ left flank isn’t exclusively focused on the pipeline.

“The goal of all our bird-dogging and protests is to push [Clinton] to be better on the climate issue as a whole, which includes Keystone but isn’t limited to that,” said Karthik Ganapathy, spokesman for the climate activist group 350.org. “When she starts articulating her policy agenda, we’re going to be looking for more than just Keystone.”

Bold Nebraska founder Jane Kleeb, whose group has played a central role in stalling the pipeline, also calls Keystone just “the first step” on issues Clinton needs to weigh in on.

“Standing with citizens on risks of fracking, oil trains and drilling in the Arctic are all issues [Secretary] Clinton must address,” Kleeb said by email. “It is not enough to say you believe climate change exists, we want to know what [Secretary] Clinton is going to do about it.”

The source who spoke about Steyer’s thinking agreed that Clinton needs to flesh out her plan for tackling climate change — one of several big policy blank spots on her 2016 agenda.

“We look forward to Secretary Clinton’s plan to promote clean energy jobs and curb carbon pollution,” the source said. “Climate change is the challenge of our generation, and every 2016 candidate, including Secretary Clinton, needs to lay out a concrete plan to tackle this issue and build the future the American people deserve.”

After leaving the 105-person fundraiser at Steyer’s home, which could raise as much as $280,000, Clinton was scheduled to attend a second fundraiser at The Century Club hosted by Esprit clothing line co-founder Susie Tompkins Buell, another deep-pocketed anti-Keystone environmentalist. That event was expected to draw 220 people and could raise as much as $590,000.

Steyer and Buell aren’t the only greens who have lavished praise on Clinton. Other major green groups, including the League of Conservation Voters and the Natural Resources Defense Council, have been reluctant to criticize her, even after liberal Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) entered the race with an explicitly anti-Keystone message. Environmentalists know that, for the Democrats’ White House hopes, Clinton is the only game in town.

Steyer’s support for Clinton came as no surprise for those who have been following him closely. He backed her 2008 bid for the White House and has worked with the Clintons on child advocacy issues. His staff also has ties to the Clintons, including Ann O’Leary, who headed the children and families program at the Steyer-backed group Next Generation before joining Clinton’s campaign as a senior policy adviser last month.

Still, Steyer’s initial foray into national politics raised some hackles among Democrats who feared he could become a disruptive force within the party: In 2013, he spent millions championing Ed Markey’s Senate campaign in Massachusetts while clobbering Stephen Lynch, Markey’s pro-Keystone rival in the Democratic primary. His tactics included hounding the candidate with aerial banners and mobile billboards for his Keystone stance.

Steyer’s decision to go after Lynch in Massachusetts had some party operatives worried that he would start targeting other Democrats, in the same way that the tea party has taken down Republican candidates who failed to hew to the ideological line. Steyer himself stoked those fears in a 2013 interview with POLITICO in which he said, “This is about consequences. If you have a pattern of voting for subsidies for oil and gas and voting against renewables and all this other stuff … there have to be consequences. That’s the whole point of this exercise.”

But Steyer hasn’t seriously attacked any Democratic candidates since 2013, even though his aides flirted with running ads against then-Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu last year for supporting Keystone. He also hasn’t backed any Republican candidates, even though other environmental groups like the League of Conservation Voters and the Environmental Defense Fund have. Instead, all seven candidates he backed last year — with decidedly mixed results — were Democrats.

As Steyer’s prominence rises, he is becoming more engrained in the Democratic establishment. He is also an influential member of the Democracy Alliance, a coalition of liberal donors. And he has hosted high-dollar fundraisers for Washington’s top Democrats, including Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.